American Jews And Israel

For Jewish liberals under 40, the entire mindset of previous generations seems to be cracking open. Jake Weisberg:

If the stupidity of the settlements is obvious to most American Jews, it is not to the majority of Israelis, who have chosen a prime minister who represents the rejection of a two-state solution. At the same time, American liberals have recoiled from the pattern of miscalculation and inhumanitythere is no other word for itin Israel's attempts to protect itself from Hezbollah and Hamas.

Last week, I saw the journalist Lawrence Wright perform a moving and disturbing monologue entitled "The Human Scale," based on his time reporting in Gaza. Whether or not one accepts the judgment of the Goldstone Report that Israel's bombing and reinvasion of the strip involved war crimes, Wright's piece (at New York's Public Theater this weekend) is a persuasive case that it constituted a wildly disproportionate response. Like the second invasion of Lebanon in 2006, the reoccupation was immensely destructive and counterproductive, sowing new seeds of hatred that will bloom for generations.

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